Dr Alex Ritchie received his B.Sc. (Hons) in
Geology and a Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh. He worked as a palaeontologist at
the Australian Museum from 1968 to 1995 where he is currently a Research Fellow.

A recent issue of Creation Ex Nihilo features an article entitled
Rock-solid
for Creation -an interview with geologist Dr Andrew Snelling (CEN, Jun-Aug 1996,
18-22). As might be expected by any reader familiar with CEN, the questions posed were
classic Dorothy Dixers and less than intellectually taxing, for example: "What are
some of the important contributions to geology that creationists are making?" and
"Evolutionists and other 'long agers' generally regard the account of Noah's Flood as
being true. What evidence are they ignoring?"

The article doesn't say who conducted the "interview", leaving open the
possibility that Andrew Snelling interviewed himself, posing the questions as well as
providing the answers. The interview might have been more informative if another geologist
had set the questions but, as we all know, Dr Snelling is extremely reluctant to expose
himself to public questioning by his scientific peers.

Who is Dr Andrew Snelling B.Sc. (Hons) (Geology), Ph.D and why should we concern
ourselves about his beliefs and activities? For many years Snelling has been geological
spokesman for an organisation formerly known as the Creation Science Foundation (CSF) in
Queensland, which has recently (Nov.1997) been renamed
Answers in Genesis. Snelling
is the most prominent young-Earth creationist in Australia with genuine geological
qualifications and a published research record in this field.

Snelling writes extensively on geological subjects in the creationist literature
and travels widely in Australia and overseas lecturing on related topics. Although his
geological qualifications are always emphasised in creationist publications, it would be
more accurate to describe him as a fundamentalist Protestant missionary rather than a
working geologist; in creationist literature Snelling is referred to openly as a
"missionary". Since the 1980s he has been geological adviser on the editorial
board of Creation Ex Nihilo and he is currently Editor of the AiG'sTechnical Journal,
a glossy publication carefully tricked out to resemble a mainstream scientific journal.

Snelling's academic qualifications are not in question, only the uses to which he
has applied them since he acquired them, as I explained and illustrated in my article
Will the Real Dr Snelling Please Stand Up?(the
Skeptic, 11 (4), pp 12-15). Strangely, Dr Snelling has never attempted to answer, or
refute my allegations.[This was true at the time of
writing. However, Dr Snelling did reply to Dr Ritchie's article but NOT his allegations,
see Andrew Snelling Answers Alex Ritchie].

Had I been the subject of such accusations, and if I believed the accusations
to be untrue, I would either have answered them publicly, or I would have taken legal
action for defamation. The reasons why Dr Snelling chose to do neither I leave readers to
judge for themselves.

Why is it important that individuals such as Dr Andrew Snelling, who publicly
misrepresent science, be asked to account for their actions? Lay audiences and even many
science teachers lack the geological expertise to analyse skilful and deliberate
misrepresentations of Earth history perpetrated by someone familiar with geological
literature and technical terminology. To appreciate why Snelling's activities should
concern both the geological community and educational authorities one needs to analyse his
creationist writings. I suspect that most geologists never see or read these remarkable
efforts and are thus unaware of the anti-scientific deception involved in them.

If we were both professional magicians it would be ethically wrong for me to
reveal how such deception was perpetrated. However, because we both claim to be
professional scientists, I have no hesitation in exposing Snelling's methods. Science
depends on intellectual honesty, both in one's own research and in accurately reporting
and using the findings of other scientists, living and dead. To be wrong in science is no
dishonour; but to deliberately misrepresent one's own or other scientist's findings is the
worst crime in the book!

If Snelling was a professional astronomer and used such dubious and unethical
methods to "prove" that Ptolemy's crystal spheres were still a valid explanation
for the cosmos, does anyone seriously believe we would consider rewriting astronomy
text-books to accommodate his views? Or, if he was a medical practitioner and maintained
that Harvey was wrong about the circulation of the blood, would our anatomy books have to
be revised?

If these examples sound ludicrous they are no more ludicrous than a professional
geologist, at the end of the 20th century, proposing that geologists world-wide have got
it all wrong for the past 160 years and insisting that we must throw out our geological
column and rewrite our geology textbooks to accommodate a 6 day creation 6000 years ago
followed, 4300 years ago, by a one-off, year long Noah's Flood.

Every field of scientific investigation has professional bodies which are supposed
to maintain standards and ethical behaviour in their discipline. In geology there are
strict rules governing the qualifications of consultant geologists. It is all the more
remarkable therefore that, for at least 17 years, Dr Andrew Snelling B.Sc. Ph.D (Geology)
has been able to operate as a geological consultant while at the same time, in the
creationist literature, deliberately white-anting the scientific discipline to which he
belongs.

Most of Snelling's articles in Creation Ex Nihilo(CEN) refer to
Australian geological features or formations, many of them internationally famous. I have
chosen three examples from more than 50 articles by Dr Andrew Snelling in Creation Ex
Nihilo, to illustrate how he skilfully selects, edits and doctors his source
materials to deceive his creationist readers, most of whom probably have little or no
geological knowledge.

The three examples are:

a) Ayers Rock (aka Uluru), one of Australia's most important tourist attractions

b) Mount Isa orebodies, one of Australia's richest mineral deposits

c) Lake Acraman Crater, a huge impact structure in South Australia

The origin of Ayers Rock
Ayers Rock is a major Australian geological feature and tourist attraction with a simple
but fascinating history. Its origins are not difficult to understand nor to explain to a
lay audience, unless, like Dr Snelling, you are constrained by a young-Earth creationist
mindset in which nothing can possibly be older than 10,000 years!

a single bed or rock layer tilted so that it now stands almost up on its
end. When measured, this single bed is at least two and a half kilometres
(1. 6 miles) thick. . . but this is only the visible part and: . . the
entire bed is in the order of some six kilometres (3. 75 miles) thick.

Snelling describes the predominant rock-type forming Ayers Rock,
correctly, as an arkose. This is a coarse grit-type sedimentary rock in which
the component particles, many of which are unweathered feldspars, are ragged,
not smooth and rounded. But, says Snelling confidently (and incorrectly), you
would not expect to find such fresh feldspars:

if Ayers Rock had been formed slowly over millions of years and had then
endured further long periods of exposure to weathering at the Earth's surface. Feldspar
minerals break down relatively rapidly when exposed to the sun's heat, water and air (for
example in a hot humid tropical climate) and very quickly form clays.

This ignores the
well-established fact that, during rapid accumulation of sediments, earlier deposits may
be quickly covered, sealed off and protected from any further weathering during the
processes of deep burial and consolidation to form rock. Undaunted, Snelling develops his
scenario in which the feldspars turn to clay, the sandstone is weakened and then collapses
as the clay is washed away. The whole explanation is a fantasy and bears no resemblance to
the real world. Snelling illustrates his explanation for the origin of Ayers Rock with a
sequence of four sketches.

Figure 1
shows water currents bringing in sand, supposedly from the Musgrave Ranges to the south.
The sand pours into a very deep water-filled basin whose floor consists of heavily folded
and eroded older rocks (age of deposition and erosion unspecified).

Figure 2 shows how a "catastrophic flood" filled in this
basin by dumping:

some 6000 metres (approx. 20, 000 feet) of sand, probably in only a matter of
hours, after having carried this sand some 100 kilometres (63 miles).

The clear implication here is that the basin seen in Fig 2 was at
least 6000 metres deep! But this leaves Snelling with a little problem:

Since the beds are now standing vertically, it is also obvious that the sand,
after being washed into the depression, and while still being compressed and hardened, was
pushed up and tilted by earth movements.

Figure 3 thus depicts the "sand layers tilted late in Noah's Flood" with the
waters draining off and eroding and sculpting the massive structure as they
went:

Following the retreat of these flood waters, and as the landscape dried, the
material in Ayers Rocks finally hardened.

Snelling thus keeps us (and
Ayers Rock) in suspense with a dramatic image of a six kilometre thick deposit of poorly
consolidated, gravelly sludge, tilted on its side and yet somehow miraculously standing up
through all of the catastrophic, destructive events of the Flood.

According to Snelling it was not until after the Flood waters finally subsided
that:

the chemicals in the water between the sand grains formed a cementing material
to bind the mineral grains together, drying in much the same way as cement in concrete
dries and binds together the stones and sand mixed with it. With the final retreat of the
waters from off the land, and the continued drying out of the continent, present day
desert wind erosion has merely pock-marked the surface of the rock.

It would appear from this
incredible chain of events that Dr Snelling has uncovered a revolutionary new technique of
concrete manufacture which would revolutionise the building and construction industry,
solve our balance of payments problems and, in the process, make his fortune!

Figure 4 shows a cross-section of Ayers Rock today, with its
relationships to the present land surface and desert sands; the underlying folded and
eroded bedrock conveniently disappears from the scene.

If a first year geology student proposed such an scenario to explain the origins
of Ayers Rock, he/she would probably be failed. That such a puerile explanation could
seriously be published by someone with a B.Sc. (Hons) and Ph.D in Geology beggars belief!

Of course Snelling's explanation of the origin of Ayers Rock turns out to be that
last resort of a fundamentalist creationist - Noah's Flood - which means it is no answer
at all. Despite this Snelling concludes:

It is hardly surprising then that most geologists are puzzled by Ayers Rock,
because the evidence there does not fit into their evolutionary story with its vast eons
of slow erosion and deposition, then slow erosion again. Instead the evidence at Ayers
Rock is much more consistent with the scientific model based on a recent and rapid,
massive catastrophic flood, such as that of Noah's day.

I challenge Dr Snelling to name
one mainstream geologist who is so puzzled by the origin of Ayers Rock that he or she has
to resort to Flood geology to explain it. Snelling conveniently avoids any mention of the
nearby, equally spectacular Olgas (or Katajute) composed of enormously thick, and only
slightly inclined, boulder beds, or conglomerates.

For anyone interested in the real story of how Ayers Rock and the Olgas formed, I
recommend a beautifully illustrated little booklet produced by the Australian Geological
Survey Organisation in Canberra.

The recent, rapid formation of the Mount Isa orebodies during Noah's Flood
Snelling (1984 b)
Many rocks of Precambrian age (>550 million years) contain fossils of primitive life
forms (algae, cyanobacteria) with no trace of higher organisms. Creationists claim that
all rocks containing fossils are the products of one universal Flood. In his explanation
of the origin of the Mt Isa orebodies Snelling (1984 b) carries this argument to absurd
lengths.

Some of the richest ore-bodies in Australia, at Mt Isa in north-west Queensland,
occur in a great mass of severely deformed and altered (metamorphosed) rocks. One rock
unit, originally shale deposits, contains abundant fossil micro-organisms, interpreted as
blue-green algae. If, as maintained by Snelling and other creationists, these very ancient
rocks are Flood deposits, all of them formed in less than one year, ca 2350 BC!

According to the conventional geological timescale (rejected by creationists) the
Mt Isa Group, source of the rich silver-lead-zinc and copper orebodies, is Middle
Proterozoic in age, deposited around 1,650 million years ago. The silver-lead-zinc and
copper orebodies are distinct and separate; each is enclosed in a different kind of
originally sedimentary, but now metamorphic, rock.

As in the case of Ayers Rock, to explain the Mt Isa orebodies in terms of Flood
geology, Snelling must first build a case for:

a) recent formation and
b) rapid formation.

a) Snelling notes the presence
of microfossils (bluegreen algae) in the shales around the Mt Isa orebodies, but remarks
that:

Wherever fossils or organic matter are found in the geological column the rocks
containing the fossils were deposited either by or after Noah's Flood regardless of their
assumed geological age. (1984, 42).

Snelling's initial postulate,
that the Mt Isa rocks are of recent origin, is thus based, not on scientific
data, but solely on a belief in the literal interpretation and inerrancy of the
Genesis
account in the Bible, ie. on religious dogma.
b) To support rapid formation of the Mt Isa ore-bodies Snelling employs a
different tactic, first exposed by Strahler (1987, p.242). He cites genuine research work
on mineral deposits forming today near a sea-floor rift in the Red Sea (Finlow-Bates 1979)
which indicated that a 1 cm thick layer of lead sulphide (galena) could be
deposited in under 5 weeks by a 1 metre thick sluggish bottom layer (with 50 ppm of
lead)moving at 1 metre/minute.

However, the Mt Isa ore bodies are more than 100 metres thick and consist of
thousands of 1 centimetre thick layers of rich ore interbedded in shale deposits over 1000
metres thick. Snelling's problem is to explain how these ore-bodies were all deposited
during the year of Noah's flood. How he achieves this is a classic example of deliberate
deception and lack of scientific integrity in creationist writings.

Snelling (1984, 43-44) writes:

It is not difficult to see the implications of these calculations. If we make
some appropriate and reasonable changes to Finlow-Bates' parameters and then recalculate
the deposition rate the result is even more startling. Consider, then, a layer of dense
ore solution, 15 metres deep flowing on the sea floor at the rate of 500 metres/minute (30
km/hr, still relatively slow) carrying 1000 pp lead all of which is to be deposited within
a distance of 1000m. (It should be noted that these figures are reasonable even in present
day terms; the Red Sea brine pools are up to 250 metres deep [32]: dense turbidity
currents are known to have travelled thousands of kilometres down the continental slope
and across he ocean floor at speeds up to between 65 and 80 km/hr [33] and concentrations
of metals such as lead carried by ore-forming solutions are by consensus stated to be in
the range X0 -X, 000 ppm, where X = 1, 2. . . . [34], and by analysis of residual fluid
inclusions in ore and ore-related minerals have been measured as up to 10, 000 ppm [35]. A
galena bed carrying 25% lead with an average thickness of 1 cm would form in only about 20
seconds, a rate of about 1 metre/30 minutes.

Snelling's reference to a 250 m deep brine pool in the Red Sea is irrelevant.
Brine pools are stagnant, stratified concentrations of hot brine in closed depressions on
the sea floor, far removed from any continental slope down which they are presumed to have
slid. An ore-bearing sequence 1000 metres thick is thus miraculously explained
away by lateral transport of ore for "a distance of 1000 metres".

Every step in Snelling's recalculations is deliberately contrived and concocted
from unrelated observations, combined to achieve astounding, and completely unwarranted,
results. The futility of the exercise is that "recent" and "rapid" are
not synonymous. Even if such fanciful ore-depositing conditions had ever occurred
at such speeds it could equally well have happened 1.65 billion years ago instead of just
over 4000 years ago.

Snelling even has the gall to cite, as further proof of rapid ore formation, the
fact that lead-isotope ratios are remarkably constant within Mt Isa orebodies. This from a
man who consistently and publicly labels universally accepted radiometric methods of
dating ancient rocks using radioactive isotopes as fallacious. However, even
deposition of the ore over a period of 1 million years (a reasonable rate in geological
terms) some 1.65 billion years ago would barely show up today within the range of standard
error in radiometric dating methods applied to such rocks.

Snelling concludes with a "creationist interpretation" that all
the silver-lead-zinc ore bodies of Mt Isa could have been deposited in less than 20 days
(1984, 45-6). He states flatly that because:

Noah's Flood occurred approximately 4,300 years ago according to Biblical
chronology, evolutionary ages for the rocks and ores at Mt Isa have to be discarded.

To support this remarkable
statement Dr Andrew Snelling B.Sc., Ph.D (Geology), expert in uranium mineralisation,
cites the writings of other creation "scientists" such as Slusher, Setterfield,
Mathews and others "who have shown that radioactivity is unreliable as a means of
dating rocks". None of the individuals cited are experts in radiometric dating.

Postscript

Within a few kilometres of Mt Isa anyone can readily collect beautifully
preserved, complete Cambrian trilobites (Xystridura, Lyriaspisand others) in
well bedded, unmetamorphosed and almost horizontal white shales. Trilobite fossils are so
abundant that the locality, Beetle Creek, is known to most Australian geology students and
amateur fossil collectors. It is unlikely that Dr Andrew Snelling is unaware of its
existence.

These trilobite beds date from the Middle Cambrian, around 520 million years ago,
and they rest directly, and unconformably, on older metamorphic rocks such as those
containing the Mt Isa orebodies. Clearly a long time gap separated the deposition of the
ore-bodies and their later deep burial and subsequent metamorphism, followed by major
uplift and erosion. Then, and only then, could the burial of myriads of trilobites in
shallow Cambrian seas have taken place.

If Dr Snelling is correct then these Middle Cambrian trilobites lived, died and
were buried post Noah's Flood. Would Dr Snelling like to hazard a guess at their date in
Biblical terms (ie. post-2350 BC) and tell us what it is?

Impact craters and Flood Geology

The recent recognition of a 600 million year old giant impact structure, the Lake
Acraman crater, in the Gawler Ranges, South Australia and its probable association with a
sheet of shattered debris in the Flinders Ranges, represents one of the most exciting
Australian geological discoveries of the last 10 years.

In an article entitled Found - More Giant Meteorite Impact Structures Dr
Andrew Snelling (1990) came up with an unusual new twist on the timing and possible
results of such impacts. He noted that one of the trends in modern geology is the "increasing
re-recognition of evidence for catastrophism in the rock record."

Snelling related how, while studying satellite images of Australia, George
Williams, an exploration geologist, noted an unusual, circular, large-scale structure
around Lake Acraman, a salt lake in the Gawler Ranges of South Australia. Williams later
visited the area and found shattered and deformed volcanic rock typical of high velocity
meteorite impact sites.

At about the same time Vic Gostin and other geologists from University of Adelaide
were mapping in the Flinders Range, 300 km east of Lake Acraman. They found a thin,
distinctive layer, up to 40 cm thick in places, of volcanic rock fragments embedded in
mudstone. The debris layer occurred in Late Proterozoic (or Precambrian) rocks, around 600
million years old.

When Williams and Gostin compared notes they realised they were dealing with
different aspects of one dramatic event, the impact of an enormous meteorite and the
ejecta sheet of debris thrown clear by it. Later, a similar debris layer was discovered
450 km northwest of the Acraman crater, considerably extending the known range of the
ejecta sheet which has now been traced for over 250 km, north to south, in surface
exposures and in boreholes.

The Lake Acraman crater is now recognised as one of the largest in the world, at
least 35 km wide and several km deep at the time of impact, but the final collapse
structure may have reached 90 km in diameter. It is estimated that a crater of this size
and depth could be caused by the impact of a meteorite 4 km in diameter. The energy
released would have been the equivalent of between 50 -100,000 hydrogen bombs! This information, and much more, is reported quite
accurately by Snelling in the early part of his article (1990, 34-36).

However, an alert reader, especially one with some geological knowledge, might
well be puzzled by Snelling's phraseology every time a geological age is mentioned. In the
extracts below all the emphases are mine, not Andrew Snelling's.

Before discussing Williams' Acraman crater, Snelling refers to the evidence for a
meteorite impact which coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs:

at the end of the so-called Cretaceous period (p. 34).

The Acraman crater was:

presumably caused by an asteroid or comet that hit the Earth during the
so-called Late Proterozoic.

It landed in the Gawler Ranges
which:

consist mainly of volcanic rocks dated conventionally at about 1600 million
years.

The evidence for the impact
ejecta comes from Gostin and colleagues who:

were carrying out research on so-called Late Proterozoic sedimentary
rocks in the Flinders Ranges where they found a debris layer of "volcanic rock
fragments embedded in mudstones" (conventionally regarded as 600 million years
old).

Snelling cited the discovery of
an equally large impact crater on the ocean floor off Canada, in the continental shelf 200
km SE of Nova Scotia. This underwater crater, 45 km wide and 2. 7 km deep, is:

conventional dating suggests that this occurred only 51 million years ago.

He then noted that:

The recent discovery of these two extra-terrestrial (meteorite/ comet) impact
structures from such widely separated locations geographically . . . and
conventionally timewise (600 million and 51 million years ago respectively)
dramatically portrays a more violent history for the Earth than evolutionary theories have
until recently been promoting.

Having set the scene, and sown
seeds of doubt in the minds of his readers about the age of the Acraman and other major
impact craters, Snelling plays his trump card, quoting from a man who:

has already caused "waves" with his theories about terrestrial
impacts, because he believes they are responsible for every geological feature on
Earth.

This remarkable individual is an
American, Mark D. Butler, "a geophysicist with more than 50 years of experience
in the oil industry." I have to admit, to my everlasting shame, that I had never
heard of this revolutionary thinker in Earth Sciences!

Snelling (strangely) does not cite an original source for Butler, only a secondary
source, Shirley (1989b). According to Snelling (1990, 37) Butler believes that:

there is no subsurface energy source capable of sustaining for 4.5 billion
years enough power to create new landforms and mountains, cause earthquakes and volcanoes,
or renew the continental uplifts." Butler "doesn't argue about the existence of
"plates", faults and other geological features, he just reinterprets the
energy source that causes them. Butler maintains that all geological phenomena are
"created immediately" when an extraterrestrial body slams into the
Earth. A basin is created with its centre at the point of impact, and the impact's force
"instantly" builds mountains and uplifts continents. "Excluding
the erosional and depositional effects energised by sunlight," he says, "no
time in a geological sense is involved in the creation of any of the Earth's geomorphs.
The sum total of all the combined meteor impacts since the beginning of the Earth 4.5
billion years ago may add up to only a few days."

Snelling noted (p. 37)that:

Naturally, large impacts are needed to elevate continents and that Butler had
pinpointed some of these. For example he (Butler) says that the Hawaiian Islands'
meteorite impact which occurred in the mid-Miocene (about 15 million years ago according
to conventional geological dating, and had a radius of about 64 km (40 miles),
created the East Pacific Basin, made the Rocky Mountains in the USA and elevated the
African continent when a portion of the crater shock front penetrated through the Earth's
core. The mid-Atlantic Ridge he (Butler) believes was created simultaneously with the
uplifting of Africa.

One doesn't know whether to
laugh or cry to find this sort of cretinous nonsense proposed by someone with a B.Sc.
(Hons) and Ph.D in Geology, as a serious explanation for some of the Earth's major
geological structures or "geomorphs".

Having established, at least to his own satisfaction, that all giant
impact craters on Earth are not only rapid but recent, Snelling introduces
Noah's Flood into the equation:

The information generated by investigations of, for example, extraterrestrial
impact craters does show that the catastrophic geology of the biblical Flood model is a
feasible alternative both in the time-frame involved, and in the geological work achieved
within that time-frame.

Snelling's dilemma is that many large impact craters have now been
identified on Earth and must be explained away by creationists:

Indeed, investigations in the past two decades have seen the number of impact
structures identified on Earth increase to more than 120 divided about equally between
those with surface expression and those that are buried and new structures are being
discovered at a rate of about five per year.

Snelling's problem is that:

According to the biblical
description of the early Earth, there is no hint of any devastation/catastrophe that would
suggest any impact cratering of the Earth's surface in those early days. Although the
events of the Creation week were geologically "catastrophic" in that the Earth
was formed, a landmass developed and was uplifted from under the initial globe-encircling
waters, and varied landforms were generated, the Flood and its aftermath are the
logical biblical candidates for the time-period upheavals when the Earth was impact
cratered. . . . Indeed, as Butler has suggested, such impact cratering could
account for sedimentary basin formation, mountain building continental uplift, volcanism,
and more, even in only a matter of a few days, while the Flood waters would do their
erosion and depositional work to fill basins, making rock layers which would then be
up-lifted/folded into mountains etc.

Snelling concludes:

So, not all trends in modern geology should be viewed negatively by
Bible-believing Christians. The discovery and investigations of extraterrestrial impact
craters on the Earth is potentially opening up a whole new panorama of feasible mechanisms
and processes that would satisfactorily explain how the catastrophic geological
developments and the time-scale portrayed by the biblical account of Noah's Flood could
have given us the geological features that we see on Earth today. Yet again its
a matter of stripping the data of their evolutionary implication and seeing them fit
neatly into the Biblical framework for Earth history.

When Andrew Snelling talks of
"stripping the data of their evolutionary history" he presumably means
editing out anything suggesting a great age for the Earth. The two articles by Shirley
(1989a, 1989b) quoted by Snelling as his source of information on impact craters, provide
a good example of Snelling's "data stripping" technique.

Shirley's articles appeared in the Explorer, published by the American
Association of Petroleum Geologists. The AAPG Explorer is a newspaper-style
newsletter, nota refereed scientific journal. It is not widely available in
Australia and I encountered some difficulty in locating a copy. I doubt whether many
readers of Creation Ex Nihilo would even bother to try, probably trusting in the
integrity of the author not to mislead them. Being of a more sceptical turn of mind I
decided to check out Dr Andrew Snelling's original sources.

Shirley (1989a) is a straightforward review of known terrestrial impact craters
and recent developments leading to the recognition of such craters. Snelling's account is
basically accurate.

Shirley (1989b), on the other hand, is a one-page report on an idiosyncratic
theory proposed by Mark D. Butler that "all geologic phenomena are created
immediately when an extraterrestrial body slams into he Earth." Butler's theory
thus challenges virtually every commonly held belief about the way that the Earth formed
and the processes that continue to change our planet.

However, far from creating "waves" with his theory Butler has, to date,
been spectacularly unsuccessful in persuading anyone to publish his paper. The outline of
his hypothesis, as related by Shirley, indicates why no self-respecting geological
publication would accept it. While this may be difficult for Mr Butler to accept, it is
nevertheless a fact of life that the history of scientific progress is littered with
ingenious, but incredible, theories which failed to gain general acceptance.

Whatever our views on the merits of Butler's hypothesis he does not deserve the
calculated misrepresentation employed by Snelling. Unsuspecting readers of Snelling's
account might be excused for thinking that Butler accepts and supports the suggestion that
the Earth's surface was completely recreated during the year-long Noah's Flood - with a
few giant extraterrestrial impacts thrown in for good measure. We must assume that
Snelling relied solely on Shirley (1989b) as a source, since Butler complains that he
could not "get anyone to consider publication of my paper."

A careful reading of Shirley's account of Butler's views reveals no mention of
Noah's Flood or anything comparable. Butler's theory of the "life-cycle" of a
crater basin clearly requires enormous periods of geological time. Butler refers to "the
birth of the Earth 4. 5 billion years ago" and noted that, while it only takes
about 60 million years for erosion to reduce the continents to sea level, "there
must be a continual renewal of energy, which in large part must be drawn from the meteor
impact process, to sustain he existence of the continents."

Snelling's juxtaposition of Butler's views (on possible impact formation of
sedimentary basins) with his own creationist views on Flood Geology is thus blatantly
dishonest. Although the formation of major impact structures is unquestionably
rapid,
it does not necessarily follow that they have to be recent, as required by
Snelling's Flood Geology.

Once again Dr Andrew Snelling demonstrates a remarkable ability for "stripping
the data of their evolutionary interpretation" in order to make them "fit
neatly into the biblical framework for Earth history." Others, less charitably,
have described such methods as "lying for God."

Nearly 10 years ago, in the Sydney Morning Herald, I publicly challenged
Dr Andrew Snelling, geological spokesman for the creationist movement in Australia, to a
public debate on a subject close to his heart - Noah's Flood - the Geological Case For
and Against. Although I have repeated my challenge several times since then, Dr
Snelling has declined to defend the creationist cause in front of his scientific peers,
although he is more than ready to do so in front of lay audiences.

I throw out another challenge, this time to the geological community and to the
national organisations governing professional qualifications. If any geologist were to be
caught salting a deposit, falsifying results or engaging in other forms of behaviour
likely to bring his/her discipline into disrepute, they would be promptly dealt with by
their peers.

In my opinion it is equally abhorrent for anyone claiming to be a professional
geoscientist to indulge in deliberately misleading and deceptive conduct aimed directly at
lay audiences and especially at young people. Dr Snelling's main aim in life, presumably
for deeply held religious reasons, is to show that noscientific evidence (from
physics, chemistry, biology, palaeontology, geology, astronomy, etc.) that implies a great
age for the Earth can be accepted. His only alternative is a six day Creation event and
Noah's Flood - take it or leave it.

To "prove" this, Snelling is apparently prepared to misquote,
misrepresent and falsify genuine scientific data. How long will it take before he is
required to justify his behaviour before his professional and scientific peers? How many
young Australians will he turn off science before he is called to account for his actions?